SOC 110 Lecture 3: Research Methods and Historical Contexts
8 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Interpreting results: answering initial questions, evaluating hypothesis, reporting findings, research reports, articles, books, repeat. Types of questions: factual/empirical, comparative, developmental, theoretical. University of chicago, 1920s, sociology was extremely influential in shaping the discipline. Will ogburn (more scientific and focused on statistics) Ethnography: participant observation and interviews, rich, deep, data, typically not generalizable. Surveys: a lot of data from large numbers, appropriate for statistical analysis, random sampling of population to generate sample, thus improving ability to generalize, drawbacks: Hard to replicate findings from controlled to natural settings. Comparative research: behaviors, attitudes, or other aspects of social life across time, place, or group, use other research methods to gather data for making comparison. Cause and effect of social context: correlation is not the same as causation, variables may be related to each other but not responsible for change in another undisputable impact of the investigator.
